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Category: GIF

September 22, 2021

GIF Experiments: 27 (Run For The Exit)

My (old) Photoshop 5 program became impossible to work with. Some issue with ‘scratch discs.’ So I worked on a 33′ X 5′ roll of Italian paper for a few weeks. I’m pleased to say it’s almost both 50 % & 60 % complete (you can do that when you work in sections, or panels). A poem is developing simultaneously. Then I remembered I had a blog and found a file of images and made this GIF (skirting the scratch-disc issue). Perhaps this GIF reflects our zeitgeist. The roll-scroll painting reflects something different.

Image | August 1, 2021

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July 10, 2021

GIF Experiments: 24 (The Ronettes… although)

I’m glad I was able to post a GIF today. I was working with a large volume of images interpreting five lines from Lyon by Pierre L’Abbe and need more time. I will (knock on wood) assemble that GIF this coming week. In the meantime I offer this ‘slow-moving river of a GIF’ featuring (ostensibly) The Ronettes, although they too were code for something else I suspect, considering when I drew them.

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July 3, 2021

GIF Experiments: 23 (Napoleon and the Cook)

This one has a humorous air to it to go with the pathos of solitude. The ‘face’ of the striding emperor (can you see it?) is the same as the harlequins in the procession with yellow flags. I created a series of pages with that face & design. A shape accidentally happened, I noticed it looked like a face and saved it – it reminded me of my (deceased) brother.

I ‘sign’ these GIFs same as I would a drawing or painting. It’s not egomania that makes me put my name in there.

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July 2, 2021

GIF Experiments: 22 (The Charge of the Light Brigade)

Although the title in the GIF looks like a book and the GIF looks like a book trailer it’s not. However I created poetic text after the fact.

The Light Brigade

As in

Let There Be Light.

Witness

The mechanics of charging light.

Witness traction activate

Clouds of unknowing known

As muscled determination.

The mechanical opposite to A sucker born every minute.

Touch your tongue to the tent of your mouth. Announce

Charge

Pronounce light

As in

Let There Be Light.

Notes on the GIF: Intimations of Runic script transform into curvilinear vegetal design indicating a charging beast. It happened visually by itself (so to speak) during the design process.

Finding ‘his’ footing. Gaining traction. The irony of a ‘massive’ beast doing double-duty as charging light. Charging like flashlight beams in a force field? Surely he is not disembodied.

This GIF ponders our pressing situation, universal as it is, and the question of something, anything, out of the blue in reply.

June 25, 2021

GIF Experiments: 21 (Crossing Timelines in the Imagination)

The Augustinian Francesco Petrarch travels backwards into the Dark Ages and witnesses President John Kennedy trying to calm Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy senses the unknown. The King of Naples in 1341 appoints Francesco Petrarch Poet Laureate. His sonnets, some say, become the model for lyrical poetry. He writes a book of imaginary letters to Saint Augustine. He writes about this experience. Kennedy considers the known and the unknown.

No martyr is among ye now
Whom you can call your own
So go on your way accordingly
But know you’re not alone

from I Dreamed I Saw Saint Augustine by Bob Dylan

I wasn’t able to find the name of the artist (painter) or photographer. In any case I do not claim copyright for the images used for non-commercial purposes of commentary and refashioning new art works.

June 19, 2021

GIF Experiments: 20 (World’s Greatest Guard Dog)

The ‘Guard Dog’ above is absurd on an obvious level. He’s clearly a harmless creature not a guard dog. Yet he is the World’s Greatest Guard Dog. Absurd. Or maybe the treasure he is guarding only needs a tiny woof and it will hide itself. I don’t know – maybe. I like to think the DADA artists might have smiled upon this little guy expected to be, or pretended to be, fierce. I’ve read they enjoyed the anarchic chaos of Keystone Cops movies and, of course, the genius of Charlie Chaplin. John Heartfield and the DADA artists created not only wildly inventive and incisive commentaries on war – war profiteering – and class privilege but did so with scathing absurdist humour. Heartfield lived in a dangerous time. His artistic satire put him in great danger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Heartfield

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May 3, 2021

GIF Experiments: 16 (Take a Photograph of What You Love)

I divided 190 images (manipulated in Photoshop) used in these three GIFS into three groups – arbitrarily. Many were repetitive and yet many unique. I sought to give each GIF its own visual rhythm. Then I added a phrase to the third GIF: Take a photograph of what you love.

I reworked and juxtaposed two medieval paintings, a photograph of Jacqueline Kennedy in Dallas, and a photograph of Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin.

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Category: GIF

Image | August 1, 2021